A Decent Paper?

Capability to write a paper means you have more competence in the field of your study. Well, that's true, I won't oppose to that. What really droops my mouth and makes my teeth grit is the conduct of our colleges that compel undergraduates to squeeze a paper from our poor knowledge acquired in school. That gets even worse when this onerous task, under most circumstances, should be finished outside school, usually when you are supposed to enjoy a colorful vacation, when the library is far far away, and when there is little references at hand.

The paper assignment is far too demanding for us. That's not an exaggeration or a conjecture.

Undergraduates in China seldom have a flexible schedual to concentrate on a specialty. In most of our time, we have to battle with a tremendous assortment of curricula, no matter what major one is in. And perhaps the most compelling challenge faced with us is the fact that if you can't work out an appropriate blueprint about your after-graduating time, you are done for. In light of this, our college time is already rather limited. What we are longing to do is to assorb knowledge as various as possible, and we can't afford to gamble all of our time on some narrow subject(which is actually what a graduate should do), or we will not broaden our horizons as a whole to lay us an unshakable fundation to make further progress, whether it be in an academic research or in a practice of work. So how can our schools demand that we write satisfactory professional papers while we still hardly digest enough knowledge?

This mode of forcing a paper can never serve its purpose. While most of us can barely attained the great height of academic standard during college time, we have more or less to adulterate some falsification in the paper. For one thing, our store of knowledge in a special field deserves no optimism, for we can draw an enough amount of time out of our own schedual with little possibility; for another, limited experience with real practice is certainly not a pledge for a promising paper. Consequently, plagiarism has its time. Dare you say that the evil aura of plagiarism pervailing in the academia of China has no bearing on this kind of plagiarism pervailing in the mass of undergraduates? Probably these two kinds of notorious trends just contribute to each other. A decent paper, from this perspective, would be a Utopia.

Imposing a paper burden on undergraduates in order to turn the tide of a slack higher education in China prove a sheer overcompensation. If our universities really crave a substantive improvement, please reflect more on their own systems, more on the morality of the faculty, and more on the nature of a decent education.

Happy New Year

Jan.1st or Christmas may signify a completely new year for people other than most of us Chinese. In our tradition, the coming of Spring Festival is the authentical signal of beginning a new year.

After an hour or so, we will embrace the true new year of ourselves, and I am, half serene, half excited. Well, it's a complex feeling hard to express. Here and now, above all, I'd like to make some wishes:

I hope my parents will be very healthy through the year, and hope they can do any things quite smoothly.
I hope I myself will get a satisfactory high score in the important examination, and pass a happy, colorful and smooth year.

Tori is back

Although I have nearly trawled through the whole internet and found completely nothing new about Tori, it is said that Tori will release a new album in around April. Anyway, that's really a thrill to me!

Tori Amos is my favorite alternative rock singer, or rather, artist, who can be my true spiritual idol for the field of music. I think I am born to be enthralled by her original music. Some would say that she was backward in her last two albums. After all, Tori is Tori, her first album little earthquakes suffices to engrave her name in my brain for all my life. What kind of talent it is! Sometimes the flame of talent may become eclipsed a little, yet the talent is always there, some day in the due course, it would restart to shine magnificant glory.

Tori told the press that the new album would exhibit a more warrior side of her. Some was very glad to predict that the true Tori would be back. In their eyes, "true Tori" means a music style that is more aggressive and less mundane(or rather, less secular). Something like what was revealed in little earthquakes and from the choirgirl hotel, the contrary of which is her last album beekeeper. Admittedly, I prefer the former to the latter, but I have learned not to impose too high an expectation on a singer. Whether music should cater to the need of audience or rather that of artists themselves is a contentious question. I'd rather believe that she merely wanted to try making some different things, ones that can satisfy herself or her heart as belonging to a liberal artist.

For all that which may display my tolerance to the singer and music I am crazy about, I am as disirous as are those longing for a "true Tori" to greet a more particular new album from Tori in this coming new year. A beautiful year. And Tori would be one of the strokes for the colors of the year.

Whoever can settle the problem of Chinese can receive the Nobel Prize

The mass of Chinese, from the immemorial past up until the recent modern time, seem almost always to have spared their efforts contemplating the conception of liberty, equality and fraternity, or anything like that. That's a big frustrating fact, isn't it?

While most of us are making our big dreams, gaping at the welfare democracy has brought to and enjoyed by the westerners thereof, seldom dare we become any more bullish about our own future. "We have too complicated a history!" "We have too bulky a population nearly uncurbed!" Boasting a long-standing history, more often, does not deserve taking that much pride in. We have, time and time again, attributed to our 5000-year history those unsettled issues emerging over underdevelopment to unscrupulousness.

As a matter of fact, we might several times in those turbulent cascades of our history all but approach the glory of democracy. Yet due to various reasons, that glory soon fizzled out. Progress of Chinese nation well resembles, the zigzag Great Wall, so to speak. We are not certain whether the Great Wall means grandeur or rather closure, nor are we secure about whether our fabric of society would indeed bring to us what the founders of her pledged to do in the first place, or not. Why can we not like those western nations - or nearer, like our neighbor Japan - building up a truly democratic nation through successful reforms, no matter through a seismic one or piecemeal ones? Why can't belief of liberty ever take strong hold on this massive land? These sphinx riddles, allow me to say, worth each and every Nobel candidate's inexorable thinking.

I have been reading Democracy in America these days. Some sentences delineating germs of America really grabbed my heart：Religion is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom. The law, the mores, and anything related to that could hark back to one thing, that is, religion. It is religion that solace those people's hearts, making them look on the bright side of things. It is religion that preachs to them virtues of love, equality and freedom. It is religion that always constricts and monitors their conscience.

Looking back on ourselves, it is quite natural and reasonable in my eye now to associate our underdevelopment and unscrupulousness with dearth of religion among us. We don't have any creeds - like those derived from Holy Bible - to guide us. We are facing with the blank slate to draw our life, for many of us are confused about the meaning of life. We are like straying lambs. We are easily misled diametrically to a dreadful direction. We are often unconsciously hurled into dark holes of moral degeneration. We are totally unaware of what a vital importance liberty has attached to human beings' life.

Buddhism has not become our common religion yet, nor has Taoism, needless to say Christianity(although the influence of it has become more and more considerable, which is however a good message for us). Religion stands for belief; though it is not the entire content of belief, it is indeed the most manifest of that. Only with a belief of substance can we Chinese finally solve those irksome social problems, ones which have been deeply ingrained.

But before achieving that goal of belief, who can tell me what kind of religion can be authentically taken up by unqualified majority of Chinese people?

That's the kind of boy I like

My best friend Hui said to me last week: "I don't miss him that much now."
"Well, that might mean nothing more than the fact that you two just calm your passion now." I impersonally replied to her.
"Maybe. But I guess we two just don't match, in others'eye, as well as in my eye now."
"I know, but you didn't think like this before..."
"Yeah, he is too playful, you know. I am kind of assiduous, at least I'm fully aware of enterprise."
The rub between Hui and her boyfriend, dormant under their euphoria in the first place, finally presented itself to them.

If I were her, I wouldn't land my self in such a plight. But what then? Love is, in so plenty of time, categorically so magical a power that can deprive of you normal IQ to make a sober decision objectively.
Think before leap. Anyway, mindful of this, those who has fallen in love.

For the part of me, I think I'm not in the age that can afford exuberant romance and capriciousness without outlining a further plan. I mean, I'm no longer a high school girl.
I can hardly not associate romantic relationship with marriage in the future. Call me old-fashioned or conservative or something like that, I'm just not so energetic to have my Mr. Right changed one after one, dissipating a rather considerable part of my time - or rather, my life - in that repeated and perhaps misleading course.
I demand merely one person to be loved by me, the one that can be my true soul mate.

Harboring the similar set of values towards life - this is my most fundamental requirement for my own relationship.
I, like Hui, cannot tolerate the one I love lacking diligence. If a boy tends to idle away much of his time and thinking little of his future as well as his due responsibility, even though he has hit me with a fantastic first impression, the more I'm with him, the more I can't tolerate. I would, very likely, get really weary of him, which, so much so that could relentlessly tear his previously attractive image to shreds.

In my university, I have had enough of those playful, idle, and superficial boys. Sometimes, I even feel apprehensive for them. How can they not consider how to embrace the grave challenges that would confront them in the near future? How can they not be urged by the responsibilities for their family? How can they pour money strokes after strokes when they even can't fend for themselves? Even if he were born in an influential family, I wouldn't count on him if he couldn't be aspiring.

I had a half-year reunion with several pals of my high school the other day. When talking with the boys, I couldn't help saying to myself: wow, that's really what a boy I like should be! There can't be any friends in my college ranking higer than they in my heart. I once again got to know, what undergirds our relationships as solidly as ever before is that we are all aspiring about our life and that we are all longing to be responsible for those who we love who we cherish.

Never engulfed by decadence, always aspiring and animated to be better off. Yeah, that's the kind of boy I like, whether as a lover or merely a good friend. That's the kind of person who I can spend my life with and who can be heartening to enrich my life!

It happened one night

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are both so pretty!

It has been a long time since I saw a movie like this. A stereotype love story though, the greatest charm lies in the vivid, live, and lovely images the characters had conveyed to me. I love the wits and considerateness of Gable, and Miss Colbert was really adorable, just like a pure young girl.

This is perhaps the most wonderful black-and-white movie I have ever seen, I guess.

Who are the people bound to the two ends of our social ties?

The electric shower machine in our bathroom broke down last week, and it worked only with disorder in its internal procedure. My father has urged the repairman time and time again, yet our claim seemed to have been ignored. So we could do nothing but change the old machine, rather disappointly at the service of the manufacturer. As soon as the new machine was carried to our house, our doorbell rang, anouncing the unanticipated visit of the repairman. This young man got a really squeamish spleen, raised his tones and asked us what the hell we were going to do with that unworked machine. We finally decided to supersede the old with the new one ourselves instead of having him do repairs on the old one, which, I guess, perturbed him a lot. Then he told us that we should pay 15 yuan as his coming fee. We got rather confound by this, which, coupled with the impatient attitude of the repairman, roiled the temper of my father who insisted not be charged without proper reasons. So you can see the dissonant atmosphere was escalating, as the repairman claimed with a kind of condescending air: I can spare your money, but you cannot insult my esteem. I am a blue collar worker, but also a human as you guys, no matter what kind of governor (my father is a public servant in the local government) you are! I got confound once again on hearing what he said. We at most vented our disapproval on his demand, or rather his company's product service, when did we look down upon him, or rather him as an ordinary blue collar?

This was one thing, and then there was another. When my parents and I went shopping this evening, we came across several shoe shiners flanking the road. I took a rest and one of the shiners offered to brush my shoes for me. This was my first time to have someone brush my shoes one-on-one, I mean, a woman was assiduously brushing my shoes under my eyes, head hung, hands moving swiftly and incessantly, while I was just sitting there, foot raised, and with great comfort. This woman was really kind, and what she did touched me a lot. She was not doing an admiring job, instead, what she did tend to be considered quite dirty and vulgar to most people in the city. However, what I can see was the particularly graceful smile under her withered face, a smile that conveys to us that she feels really decent earning her living by her own work. Subliminally, I feel a little bashfull pinned under such a circumstance that was somewhat weird to me. I took notice of her sweater, on which the insignia Nike was rather conspicuous. Obviously, another stunt from Nike counterfeiters. Now take a look at my shoes, a Nike too, but the different thing is, it is a real one that cost more than 800 yuan. Ironical, isn't it? These shoe shiners, talked buoyantly, and worked like they have already had gratification, but I cannot help feeling sympathy for them. Although they struggled to get rid of abject poverty, what in essence can they gain from their cheap labor? They only charge 2 yuan each time they serve a customer! What indeed sustains them to lead a vigorous life is not the humble pay from their humble jobs, rather, I guess, is their tenacious faith to earn a living, for themselves, or more precisely, for their family, for the chance that they can lead a better life than they themselves in the future.

I am not born in a wealthy family, nor in a precarious one. Yet I am fully aware of my difference from people living through their humble working. If there is any invisible bond in this society, I am, undoubtedly, not on the same end with those people, like the repairman, like the shoe shiner. I always harbor an ideal, that some day I can employ my own purse to help those who are kind, honest, but belonging to another end of the social tie. Believe it or not, I dare not forget what Einstein said: our life is bound with others' by ties of compassion. I think we all are born endowed with these powerful ties, but not all of us preserve them all our life. Some get rich, but sever the tie from the poor due to the forfeit of benevolence, while some give up on themselves and acknowledge them to be humble and inferior to others, thus dissociating from the pull of the ties. God never abandons us, and is always there delivering us, for we have been given the power to have tremendous emotion. In the meantime, we have to deliver ourselves too, that is, never leaving the social ties.

In China's society, mores is from bad to worse. I am struggled but have to admit that this saying is not unreasonable. The rub lies in the fact that the wealthy are impassive to philanthropy and the poor hoard hatred towards society. Ties of compassion is limp or people on the two ends of the ties strayed. That is a dangerous message, because it would lead us separately to two poles far more apart, because it can become a culprit who turns blind eye to the lapse of great human emotion, and because it connotes that a lot of us abstain from delivering ourselves!

Whenever I am deeply moved by human beings' tough, full of trials and tribulations, yet epic and laudable life, I can see the stars in my eyes. I always believe that the most pure and shining tears are sheded for our shared sentiment in this world full of miracles.

A tour to Xitan(in Zhejiang province)